Integrated lead or wireless flexures and suspensions of the type incorporated into disk drives are well known. With the continuing evolution of disk drives there is a need to reduce the physical size of the flexures and suspensions while at the same time enhancing their mechanical and electrical performance characteristics. Known approaches for meeting these objectives can be conflicting and may present difficult design optimization issues.
For example, high trace electrical bandwidths can lead to excessive signal reflections. These reflections can be caused by intrinsic parasitic capacitance in the disk drive preamplifiers to which the traces are connected. It is known to form windows below the traces in the stainless steel layers of flexures and suspensions, but this design parameter impacts both impedance and bandwidth in a given design space region. There is a need for improved flexure and suspension structures and associated methods relating to design spaces that are relatively sensitive to bandwidth changes while being relatively insensitive to impedance changes.